My favorite recipes: "Blueberry Hill" "Pompeii" and "Lilac."

This was a very small financial investment in a book that will really change my whole house.

I am choosing colors that are more adventurous than I would ever have chosen before.

Enjoy this book, I did (and still do).

But not only is The Perfect Palette a gorgeous book with flawless room color combining recipes that come out looking amazing, but Bonnie Krims ACTUALLY USED THEM ALL, she's tried them. Plus, she's done her own illustrations and written a little story about each recipe. The book is like a coffee table book, but it's also a really good HOW TO kind of book. I thought doing a new paint job on my rooms was going to be a real drudge, but with this book I really got into it because the colors were so different from what I'd normally think would work, but on the walls, amazing!

Then, based on the finished walls, I used the book's instructions on setting up a room, and after rearranging some of the furniture and knick-knacks and lamps - my friends were blown away. That's all I can say. If you're really serious about getting your rooms in shape, I think this is THE book to buy.

I hope she writes a book for exterior house painting. Because that is my next project.

All my friends constantly comment on how professional our home looks.

A must buy.

Perhaps the publisher or author can publish (via website?) an update to the colors once Benjamin Moore releases their new pallet.

The book was great while it lasted.

The book has 50 "recipes" of colors, each consisting of three major colors that would work well together, and recommendations for accent and trim colors. Each color recipe occupies two pages in the book.

The three colors are painted in rectangles on the top of the right page along with a text only description of recommended trim and accent colors. On the left page is either a photograph or a painting/sketch showing the colors in use with each other. So far, great. But the implementation...

Only 19 of the 50 recipes are illustrated by photographs of rooms, the rest are illustrated by a piece of artwork using the same color scheme but usually having nothing to do with a room of a house (e.g. a fish, a person on a bicycle, the Eifel tower,etc.). To make matters worse, the printing of the book (mine is hardcover edition) does not seem to do a good job of reproducing the colors. So, when there is a photograph, the colors in it don't seem to come close to the colors in the sample rectangles on the opposite page. This caused me confusion because now I don't know if the photo is representative, or the color patches, or neither. Only way to be sure would be to take the book to a store and look up the color samples on strips.

I think this would have been an excellent book concept if all the recipes had photos representing rooms with that color scheme, if the color reproduction of the book was much more accurate, and if examples of the recommended trim and accent colors were displayed in addition to the three major colors. And in the example usage of the colors, I really wanted to see rooms, not artwork.

That being said, I did pick up some good points from some of the limited text about picking colors in general, transitioning color schemes between adjacent rooms, etc. I don't think the book will be a long term reference on my bookshelf due to the above weeknesses.

A new edition of this book taking these things into consideration would be great!

I purchased this book prior to closing on my new home, and used it to select room and accent colors for every single room in my home. The book encouraged me to use colors I naturally liked, but showed me how to combine colors so that going from room to room the colors transitioned well.

The book also provided paint chip #'s so I went to my paint store and looked up the colors in the book's palettes, and brought the appropriate chips home so I could see them in my own home.

I will use this book as a color reference guide whenever I do any further decorating projects.

Excellent value for the money also.

Reading the other reviews, I think people who expect a 'decorating' book will be disapointed in this book. There are very few photographs of actual rooms, just a picture of each color combination. But if you need a reference for colors that work together you should find this book helpful. In addition to the three major colors in each scheme, the author suggests wood tones and accent colors to go with each plan. She also offers some excellent suggestions for choosing colors outside the plans, for example - use the darkest, richest end of the color chip to select a color, then work back to lighter shades until the color is usable in your particular situation.

I found the book very helpful, and feel certain it's a reference I will continue to use.

Relatively few of the combos show an actual photo of a room; the rest show a hand-colored drawing of a randomly selected object. A pink flower with a green stem is very pleasant and pretty, but does little to help me visual a pink room with a green carpet. Maybe that's just my limitation, but if I was going to do all the visualization myself, why buy a book in the first place?

Lastly, times when a real room *is* shown, it frequently doesn't really showcase the colors in question. One combo has a light yellow accented with lavender, and the picture shows a yellow entryway which has a lavender sweater draped over a bench there. Yes, the colors look nice together... but are the homeowners supposed to leave the sweater there permanently? What if they accidentally leave a pink jacket there instead?! Oh no!

It seems 98% of this book could be summed up by saying "Paint your walls a light pastel color that pleases you. Then furnish with the stuff you already have. Trust me, it'll look okay." Not bad advice, but I was kind of hoping for more.

No, the photographs and the paint chips will not perfectly match the actual color on your wall. However, be assured that you will have colors that visually flow together...nothing jarring, nothing clashing. For anyone who has painted the same room three times within as many weeks (as I have) because each time a color wasn't quite right, you will appreciate this book!

I myself did not mind that there were mostly illustrations of the color "recipes" as opposed to all photographs. Your room isn't going to look exactly like the photographs anyway...

When I went to the paint store I found that Benjamin Moore had changed their paint color numbers, but the paint store had no problem mixing my chosen color for me from the book.

The best thing this book did was give me courage to use color. I caught the bug when I first painted and now there's no stopping me. It has given my house such personality and my accessories and artwork really stand out against the wall colors. None of the colors in the book are "wild" or "outrageous" (or I wouldn't have used them). Even though I used yellows and greens and other colors in different rooms, everything seems to flow really well because the colors were designed to go together.

I would definitely recommend this book.

Where this book really falls short is in helping you take that next step. The pictures are too few to help you visualize the possibilities. Worse, each palette gets one page of text to describe it and its possibilities. Without fail, the first half of the page (at least) is taken up with flowery prose describing the natural setting that inspired the palette. This leaves a paragraph or so to describe the rooms best suited to the palette and advice on how to implement it. The book badly needs more details on this area and the author should either add another page of text for each palette or replace the nature guide material with more practical information.

When I finished this book, I felt like the color palettes were the result of years of experience but the book itself might have been produced in a week. This book is useful mostly as an idea generator and given its relatively low price it might well be worth the money to pick it up on that basis alone. I can't say it's the best color book I've purchased, but it did ultimately help me get to my personal color palette.

However, I have to agree with the criticism of the other reviewers. The drawings are unhelpful and the text is insufferable. Instead of a photo of my chosen palette in context, there is Krims' doodle of the Eiffel Tower. Instead of suggestions on how to use the "palamino" palette, I am subjected to a paragraph of trivia on how the horses are bred.

"The Perfect Palette", with more concrete examples and less fluff, could easily be one of the most effective and useful books of its type. I'm writing this review hoping to convince Krims that photos of rooms are neccessary, especially for the bolder palettes. Hopefully she'll include more of them in her next book.